Remember Elmore Leonard's advice: “Never open a book with weather"? Then there's Stephen King on Daphne du Maurier and how "she wrote the best first line" in her classic book The Birds: “On December the third the wind changed overnight and it was winter.”

Rory McIlroy condemns ‘unacceptable’ Ryder Cup abuse and confirms his wife was hit by a beer Shane Lowry credits Erica McIlroy for her resilience, as she received ‘astonishing’ abuse www.irishtimes.com/sport/golf/2...

Thanks for all the Never A Rose Submissions. We'll get back to you as soon as we can.

FLASH WRITERS! I'm judging the Allingham Flash Fiction Comp and it's been extended! The deadline extended to Sunday, 12 Oct at 23:59 / 11:59 pm. Applies to both on-line and postal submissions. All other competition rules and guidelines remain in effect; see www.allinghamfestival.com/fiction-poet...

It needs to be said from time to time that Black Wings Has My Angel by Elliott "Primarily I have a simple desire to shine my ass—to show off a bit in print" Chaze is just fabulous.

Brendan having a laugh.

Venetian Vespers by John Banville review – a haunting honeymoon This brooding tale of an Englishman’s downfall in fin-de-siècle Venice is memorably eerie – but it’s hard to care about such a pompous protagonist www.theguardian.com/books/2025/s...

New in House Magazine from @saltpublishing.com

"Kiss me and you will see how important I am." Sylvia Plath (journal entry recalling a conversation with Winthrop Means).

"You have to believe in your stuff—every day has to be the new day on which the new poem may be it." John Berryman

"You have to believe in your stuff—every day has to be the new day on which the new poem may be it." John Berryman

No screeners for this issue, folks. I’ll be reading and responding to every poetry submission. If you identify as disabled, please submit!

The email rejecting my novel this morning was one thing; the comma splice in the opening line was another.

Good old Andrew!

The great Michael Chabon has suggested, for a cute little fact, "factito," and I'm thinking we should make this happen.

“All writing is pigshit. People who leave the obscure and try to define whatever it is that goes on in their heads, are pigs. The whole literary scene is a pigpen.” Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) – French playwright, poet, actor, theatre director, and theorist.

“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.” - Leonard Cohen (who would have turned 91 yesterday).

From the Irish Times article on Irish writers published in The New Yorker: Number of stories published to date by deceased and living authors. www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...

Lost by David Wagoner would be a good one if you got lost in a forest. Mind you, Staying Alive would be, perhaps, even more useful, but it's a lot longer to memorise. (I heard one time that park rangers used to hand it out to people heading into the wilderness. I like to think that's true.)

Got my fingers crossed for Andrew Miller. (We started our writing lives together in a small writers workshop in Bristol back in the mid -eighties - there the similarities end.)

François Boucher (French painter) on his problem with nature: "trop verte et mal éclairée" (too green and badly lit).

RTÉ Short Story Competition 2025 shortlisted authors announced www.rte.ie/culture/2025...

Brenda Fricker- Parental abuse, sexual violence and mental health struggles: the Oscar-winner has endured more than most. She explains why she decided to write a memoir www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...

Author Naoise Dolan on the risk of death aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla www.newstalk.com/podcasts/hig...

"I get a lot of letters from people. They say, 'I want to be a writer. What should I do?' I tell them to stop writing to me and get on with it." - Ruth Rendell

‘She was one of the greatest literary voices of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A fearless wordsmith whose prose shimmered with truth, beauty and rebellion.’ A new two-part radio documentary on Clare FM explores the life and work of Edna O’Brien: soundcloud.com/clarefm/word...

"I get a lot of letters from people. They say, 'I want to be a writer. What should I do?' I tell them to stop writing to me and get on with it." - Ruth Rendell

Very proud of Caragh - a graduate of our writing program at ATU Sligo. Her debut novel, Sugartown (from Oneworld), just released. "For fans of Sally Rooney and Megan Nolan comes a remarkable new Irish debut about growing up and moving backwards." www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...

Long-winded apologies seem more sincere, study suggests www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

For those who might watch University Challenge, the youngest boy is facing his "starters for ten" tonight as part of LSE's team, so if you know the answers, shout them out good and loud to him. BBC2 8.30pm. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Today's wee haul.

“It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.” ― Robert Hass

Are you +/- a friend interested in learning about poetic forms such as the sonnet or the pantoum? If so, why not join me next month, when I’ll be leading this 4-week online evening workshop. Reposts appreciated! irishwriterscentre.ie/courses/an-e...

👇This ought to be great! An exploration of poetry forms with the wonderful @maeveos.bsky.social.

Yup, I sure am.

Brendan Gleeson: The older I get, the better the film parts that come in www.thetimes.com/culture/thea...

One of the first places to offer me a teaching gig when I returned to Ireland not too long after it opened. 🙏

When I think of the mountain of dreadful books and articles published out there compared with the small hill of really good ones, it gives me hope that AI will eventually self destruct in gibberish.

Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter Are Ready for ‘Godot’ www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/t...

The ILT in-house Health and Wellness specialist offered sage and comforting words of advice to all the staff during our group hug this morning that I feel obliged to share with you: "You're on Earth. There's no cure for that."

“Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion.” ― Barry Lopez

Anthropic Agrees to Pay $1.5 Billion to Settle Lawsuit With Book Authors The settlement is the largest payout in the history of U.S. copyright cases and could lead more A.I. companies to pay rights holders for use of their works. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/t...

Behind the Scenes of Alex Winter @alexwinter.com and Keanu Reeves’ ‘Waiting for Godot’ www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult...

I recognize that not everyone looks things up for a living, as I do, but it would be nice if people could figure out how to do elementary web searches and lift the requisite fingers to do it.

The Secrets of Vera Caspary, the Woman Who Wrote "Laura" www.newyorker.com/books/page-t...

I will never forget watching The Last Picture Show for the first time in my mid-teens. (I think it was on BBC 2 on a Sunday night film slot.) Man, it blew me away.

It's a word

“Song, which I am equating with poetry, creates a feeling in the hearer; if the feeling gives pleasure, you have understood the song.” — Mary Ruefle

"If you have any idea for a poem, an exact grid of intent, you are on the wrong path, a dead-end alley, at the top of a cliff you haven’t even climbed." Mary Ruefle

I see a few people complaining about this, but what they fail to understand is that his great-great-grandfather was Leopold Bloom. Am I wrong?